provincial politics

If Kathleen Wynne is to achieve anything for Toronto—and transit is top of the list—she needs Rob Ford to knock around

By Philip Preville | Illustration by P.J. McQuade Back in mid-June, when the crack scandal had brought Rob Ford to his knees, it was Premier Kathleen Wynne who, with a few carefully chosen words, made his problems go away. She said publicly that she wanted to repair the rifts between them and that she would not “stand in judgment” of his personal or legal troubles. He could not have asked for a better endorsement. If the premier doesn’t care about a crack video, why should anyone else? The scandal was stashed in the bushes alongside his speech slurrings, conflict-of-interest court dramas and the rest.

No, not thatDoug. Toronto deputy mayor Doug Holyday thrilled Progressive Conservatives yesterday by signing on to run in this summer’s Etobicoke-Lakeshore byelection. He’ll be facing off against fellow executive committee council member Peter Milczyn, who’s representing the Liberals.Although Holyday hasn’t actively campaigned in 15 years (last election, he took more than 70 per cent of the vote without spending a penny), the veteran councillor immediately issued a savvy opening salvo: he promised to forgo his council paycheck for the duration of the campaign, prompting Milczyn to follow suit a few hours later. He also has Rob Fordready and waiting to start banging on doors on his behalf.

Sandra Pupatello was McGuinty’s pit bull for eight years before decamping to the private sector. Now she’s back, gunning for his seat, and fierce as ever

Interview by Malcolm Johnston | Photography by Daniel Ehrenworth

You’re trying to take over the Liberal party at a perilous time. The province has a $14.4-billion deficit and a scandal around every corner. What on earth is possessing you to run? Politics is in my DNA. There were a number of galvanizing factors, too: the threat that the Liberals might lose the next election, the fact that Ontarians are afraid of losing their jobs and that university grads can’t find work in their fields.

You were an MPP for 16 years. A year and a half ago, when the Liberals were polling badly, you left to work at PricewaterhouseCooper. Suddenly McGuinty quits and you’re back. Are people wrong to see you as an opportunist? I wasn’t considering a run until party members started calling me. Plus, leading the province won’t be easy. We’re in for some tough times.

You were McGuinty’s pit bull—“a scrapper,” as you’ve put it. Where does that moxie come from? When I started as an MPP in 1995, there weren’t very many women. If you didn’t stand up for yourself they shoved you out of the way, and I couldn’t let that happen. I’m a daughter of Italian immig­rants. I’m from Windsor, and people associate me with a tough city. I wear that like a badge of honour.

In your 20s, you were a cashier at A&P— Damn straight. And I was good! My manager called me Speedy Gonzalez because I’d whip customers through. Later, when I was campaigning door to door, I knew lots of constituents from those days. I could usually recall their grocery lists, too.

Nothing tests a finance minister like a recession, and over the last few years, Dwight Duncan has been a powerful leader both inside and outside the legislature. When the federal government was dragging its feet on an auto sector bailout back in 2008, Duncan, No. 16 on our 2012 list of Toronto’s 50 Most Influential People, persuaded McGuinty, who in turn persuaded Harper, that not helping GM and Chrysler would turn the lights off in hundreds of thousands of Ontario homes. In speeches following the $4.8-billion bailout, the CAW leader Ken Lewenza told his constituents that if it weren’t for Duncan, they wouldn’t have jobs. Today, Duncan is being pilloried by another set of unions over legislation that would freeze public sector wages for two years. It’s the most sweeping labour reform legislation ever implemented in the country, and he’s determined to see it pass in the next budget. Although he won’t be running in the next election, you can be sure the minister who dragged the McGuinty Liberals to the right will land himself a plum post in the private sector. In our interview, Duncan tells us why his friends call him the Hulk, and what he would do if he were Toronto’s mayor for the day (he’d stop coaching football—zing!).

The race to be the next leader of the Ontario Liberal Party is now, finally, an actual race. Three weeks quietly passed following Dalton McGuinty’s resignation as Ontario’s premier before any of his political brethren launched a leadership bid. Then, in the space of 24 hours, a pair of contenders revealed their candidacy: Toronto-Centre MPP Glen Murraybroke the silence Sunday night and Don Valley West MPP Kathleen Wynnewill follow suit early this evening. Wynne already received an endorsement from Liberal caucus member David Zimmer, who tweeted his early approval, while Murray had former RIM CEO Jim Balsillie and former health minister and failed mayoral candidate George Smitherman in the crowd when he announced his bid at Maple Leaf Gardens. At this very early juncture, we’re going to say Wynne’s off to the better start, purely from PR perspective. Having Balsillie and Smitherman’s support would be a certain boon for a politician mounting a leadership bid back in 2007. Today, we’re not so sure.

During his nine years as premier, Dalton McGuinty displayed a magical ability to maintain the squeaky clean persona of Premier Dad—that smiling paternalist whose ramrod-straight affect evoked a grown-up Michael Cera in a suit—while all hell broke loose around him. The eHealth boondoggle may have cost David Caplan his cabinet post and spiked George Smitherman’s run for mayor, but it never stuck to McGuinty. The same goes for the ORNGE scandal, from which McGuinty walked away with hardly a scratch. Over the past few months, Energy Minister Chris Bentley has become the public face of the cancelled power plants fiasco, and Education Minister Laurel Broten has morphed into the teachers’ favourite super­-villain. Of course, you don’t stay premier for three terms without knowing how to bob and weave, but McGuinty’s decision to lock up the legislature as he stepped down was the first time he’s taken a direct hit for his party rather than the other way around. The unions will eventually settle, the Liberals will elect a new leader, and life will go on. McGuinty’s lasting image as premier, however, will be marred by the ignominious way he went out.